At the Limits of the Consenting Subject: Chronotopic Formulations of Consent and the Figure of the Porn Performer

Abstract

This article traces the 2015 controversy following porn performer Stoya’s accusation of rape by fellow performer James Deen, in which competing ideas about Stoya’s ability to consent circulated through popular and social media discourse. Focusing on the occupational class of porn performers, the article suggests that interpretations of sexual assault and notions of consent rely on particular models of personhood to prescribe and delimit definitions of who and how one can occupy a consenting (and thus, nonconsenting) subjectivity. The article introduces three chronotopic formulations of consent, spatiotemporal parameters for when and where consent is considered applicable, demonstrating how each is applied to a victim of sexual violence according to how the victim is interpellated as a particular kind of subject.